You spend more than twenty years raising a kid, and it comes down to this - a photo of him with his feet propped up on a desk at the Army recruiter's office. It was taken just about two hours ago.

He's gone. I won't be able to process all this for awhile. It's a major step in his life, and it's no less in ours.

Jordan is on his way to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he's to receive basic training and advanced individual training as an infantryman. His ultimate goal is to be in federal law enforcement, so this is a stepping stone toward it. After a year in the infantry, he can move to military police.

As a parent, I'm both proud of my son and worried for him. Ambivalence seems to be my fate. He has some fine qualities and some maddening ones, but on the whole, Jordan is a good kid. As one of my friends put it, "We realize sometime when they're teenagers that we're just along for the ride." That is so right. We've either instilled good values in them or we haven't and by the late teens there's no going back.

I've already started writing letters to him. We won't hear anything from him for a few days, but once I have his APO address, I'll write often.